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Moenovel expanding outside of Pulltop, are all the Willplus imprints in danger?


bakauchuujin

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Recently Moenovel released their first VN outside of Pulltop which is Cross†Channel. Because of this I got scared that they would localize more titles from Willplus which is a pretty large parent brand. Because of how bad Moenovel's localizations are in terms of censorship and translation this means a lot of titles could be prevented from ever having a good western release. When looking at the discussion page on steam for Cross†Channel I found this http://steamcommunity.com/app/812560/discussions/0/1698294337788774035/. Someone here claims that they found menu graphics for Ojou-sama wa Sunao ni Narenai which could hint that Moenovel is working on that VN. This would mean that they could have killed of Ensemble for us. The person claiming this also liked to the pictures he/she found 

NSFW

Spoiler

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It seems to not be censored but I doubt Moenovel would release anything uncensored so it is probably just in an early stage before they have goten to the point of removing things.

What do you people think, have anyone found these files? Probably not since I doubt most people here would buy a copy from Moenovel, but if anyone have it would be nice if they confirmed if this is true or not. Do you think the file being there means that they plan to release Ojou-sama wa Sunao ni Narenai? Also what is your opinin on Moenovel potentially expanding to a lot more titles from Willplus.

Edited by bakauchuujin
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1 minute ago, bakauchuujin said:

WillPlus is pretty big though so the damage could be large.

Actually, Mangagamer has a relationship with WillPlus as well. They have Propeller and Hermit as partners after all, and Hermit is a dead company so that means MG is connected to them in some way.

So therefore not all WillPlus licenses will be butchered by MoeNovel at least.

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3 minutes ago, VirginSmasher said:

So therefore not all WillPlus licenses will be butchered by MoeNovel at least.

Yes I know not all WillPlus licenses will be butchered by Moenovel, but I still think that the danger of a lot of them being is quite large. Also they have a relationship with Jast USA through Starless by Empress which is a WillPlus imprint.

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Just now, bakauchuujin said:

Yes I know not all WillPlus licenses will be butchered by Moenovel, but I still think that the danger of a lot of them being is quite large. Also they have a relationship with Jast USA through Starless by Empress which is a WillPlus imprint.

All I can hope for is that they don't touch any more plotge.

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I'm still waiting to read Ageha's route in Konosoro... which everyone says to avoid as the MoeNovel version makes no sense, even with the uncensored patch.

Which is a shame as I enjoyed what I read so much in the other routes I actually did a gliding session, lol! 

Every chance I get, news article and updates I poke MoeNovel about fixing it, not that they ever would but at least the bashing / pressure is there. 

Edited by Trickay
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17 minutes ago, Trickay said:

I'm still waiting to read Ageha's route in Konosoro... which everyone says to avoid as the MoeNovel version makes no sense, even with the uncensored patch.

Which is a shame as I enjoyed what I read so much in the other routes I actually did a gliding session, lol! 

Every chance I get, news article and updates I poke MoeNovel about fixing it, not that they ever would but at least the bashing / pressure is there. 

It's pointless to point out MoeNovel's flaws to them. They'll continue to be garbage even with massive heaps of criticism are dumped on them.

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Ensemble... RIP ;(

I really wanted to see their novels in English... Koi no Canvas, for example... Golden Marriage, Gokigen Naname...

 

But not like this! It's the worst scenario I can imagine! Fans will work again for uncensoring and fixing their games?!

 

Pleeease, I hope it's not true. Not Ensemble, agh, please, I beg you, no...

*crying loudly*

 

They are trolling us with all those hentai CG, even if they won't include it anyway? Awesome... just awesome. *sigh*

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53 minutes ago, Narcosis said:

Luckily, chuunige is not exactly what sells, especially in case of Steam.

In this case, yes, fortunately... If they had been willing to put TB more on sale near the beginning, its sales wouldn't have been so bad, but pushing for that much made it an impossibility, since it isn't exactly a casual title.  Pygmalion was doomed from the beginning, most of its sales coming from the yurige fanatics.

BB would probably be a decent success over here, if I were to pick any chuunige that would have a chance of success, that is.  Guns+Recognizable Fantasy Races+Superviolent Death and soul-eating weapons... almost guaranteed to gain at least some interest.   Dies Irae suffers from being a mountain (most people start going 'What is this?' inside the prologue, lol), Muramasa is so out there on a philosphical limb that only the core fanbase and those desperate for story will buy it, and I honestly can't see anyone but a very small crowd of strange people falling in love with Devils Devel Concept (I love it, but I recognize that it takes a peculiar mind to like psychopathic heroines and protagonists). 

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The problem is the end users. If everybody does what the free market claims people to do, then bad quality wouldn't sell and if only quality products can turn in a profit, then we would only see quality products. However in the real world, most consumers seem to care more for price, color, brandname etc than quality. The fact that Moenovel is doing what they are doing just confirms that this applies to VNs as well.

4 hours ago, Veshurik said:

They are trolling us with all those hentai CG, even if they won't include it anyway? Awesome... just awesome. *sigh*

I wouldn't call it trolling and it's more common to include extra files than first meets the eye. In fact I find it likely that if a VN is released in English with some or all HCGs removed, it's possible they didn't actually bother to remove the image files from the release. It's enough to just remove them from the script and the end user will never know. If they remove files, they risk creating a new bug where the game will crash on a missing file. Leaving them unused will reduce the need for testing, which in turn reduces production costs. It's only interesting from a financial point of view if they are running out of room on the disc.

 

The question is how image(s) from a different title ended up being included in a release. The only thing I can think of is trolling or just testing if it would be noticed. It's really messed up if it happened by accident even if they work on both titles at the same time.

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3 minutes ago, Infernoplex said:

I seriously doubt they can butcher so many VNs in such a short time frame

A Sky Full of Stars released only 3 and a half month ago and they have already released Cross Channel, I wouldn't underestimate the speed at which they can ruin VNs. There are probably a lot of people willing to translate that aren't good enough that other companies would use them but that Moenovel feel satisfied using.

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27 minutes ago, bakauchuujin said:

A Sky Full of Stars released only 3 and a half month ago and they have already released Cross Channel, I wouldn't underestimate the speed at which they can ruin VNs. There are probably a lot of people willing to translate that aren't good enough that other companies would use them but that Moenovel feel satisfied using.

I think ASFOS and Cross Channel had at least a year or two work on them... and a couple of months I guess for those Lovekami spin-offs. I think it will take at least some time now for Moenovel to announce anything else... unless I am wrong in this assumption, their next announcement could come only in a year from now. Give them time to butcher something else. That is, If they don't finally give up, which would be good for us.

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I like think that as long as Pulltop still have sales from their Japanese VNs, they could still have chances to do more questionable localization in the future. So the only chance that they learn from their mistake it would be when the main company was goes bankrupt as well, not just MoeNovel because it was more or less just like a branch in which even if MoeNovel goes bankrupt Pulltop could form another localization company, who obviously will follow MoeNovel's policy. I hope that Pulltop not bankrupted before they learn from their mistake of their overseas release (Without 18+ content).

As for Willplus brand, well there's too much to explore lol. But if they actually going to do that, then the most safe title to be localized would be Ayakashibito because it's also have PSP version with new route. Of course it also already have translation as well. As for Ensemble VNs, while at first it looks interesting because some of those are have cute trap MCs, in the end it's more or less just average charage so I'm not quite interested with those.

PS - As Ojou-sama Narenai VN, well the VNDB score was pretty much average so I'm not quite interested with that.

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59 minutes ago, Infernoplex said:

I seriously doubt they can butcher so many VNs in such a short time frame

History tells otherwise. Back in the early 80s, video games started to earn a lot of money. Some rich investors in New York figured it would be easy money. They bought some game companies and started some new ones. They didn't understand why people would buy and assumed people would just buy anything. Atari got bought and profits increased. The programmers/game developers asked for a pay rise, but was denied because "they were people working in a production line and were no more important than the people putting the games into boxes". The elite/veteran from the development department quit and formed Activision, the first company to produce games for hardware produced by somebody else (Atari 2600). Next the investors came up with the idea that since quality in games wasn't something they understood, the way to earn more was to produce more. This meant they started releasing one game each week, which meant games coded in two days. The market got flooded with unplayable games and it lead to the great video game crash of 1983. All of the "once a week" companies died, but sales of the already produced games continued at lower and lower prices. With the flooding of really cheap junk games, the quality games at $50 or whatever became so hard to sell that quality companies started to die as well. While many sources states this to be a worldwide event, it was actually an American thing as only NTSC games were affected. Europe was protected due to PAL only hardware.

 

In short: don't underestimate the foolishness and destructive power of corporate ignorance. It may have happened a long time ago, but investors with cash and no insights appears over and over to cause chaos as many times as possible.

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